Internet ‘Concessions’ Coming to China? Don’t Hold Your Breath

Amid all the murkiness around the Shanghai free-trade zone, one area has drawn special interest: talk that the Internet will be freer there, with unblocked access to Facebook and Twitter.

The confusion began with a Tuesday piece in the South China Morning Post that said the Internet would be unblocked in the Shanghai trade zone. That was followed by a Wednesday piece on the website of the party mouthpiece People’s Daily rebuffing the content of the SCMP article. Things got even murkier when the article disappeared from the People’s Daily site on Thursday and a new Reuters report emerged saying that another special economic zone in Shenzhen would have unfettered access to the Internet.

An image of Nanjing Road in Shanghai’s old International Settlement published in “Nostalgia for Shanghai” by Kokusho-kankoukai.

Via Wikimedia Commons

On Friday, Wang Jinhai, the spokesman for the Qianhai Economic Zone in Shenzhen who was cited in the Reuters report, shed a bit of light on what might be going on. Mr. Wang said in an interview with China Real Time that the Qianhai zone does eventually plan to have an open Internet that meets “modern international financial communications needs,” but that won’t happen overnight. Instead, Mr. Wang said, it is likely to take five or six years, with a first step over the next two years involving some cooperation with Internet providers from Hong Kong and Macau.

Between personnel and ideology shifts among China’s political elite, a half-decade timeframe for a policy means its ultimate fate is uncertain, at best. Even if the policy is eventually put into place, the long timeline puts significant doubt around the speculation that pinged about China’s social media after the SCMP report Tuesday.

Online, the prospect of the Internet being open in only one part of the country met with criticism, as users of Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblog dubbed it a “concession,” a reference to special districts around China – such as the French Concession in Shanghai– that were portioned off for inhabitants from colonial powers a century ago.

Also on Friday, a new article in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily (in Chinese) – that unlike the one posted Wednesday remains online –poured cold water on the prospect of an open Internet in only parts of China, saying that any such policy would be implemented consistently across the country.

It also tamped down any expectation of the Internet being opened at a specific time: “We cannot rule out that one day the Great Firewall will be gradually weakened until Internet management is diluted. But that would be the result of the comprehensive national strengthening of social development and an increase in government self-confidence, it would be the result of a China matching America in the balance of power, not because of people’s excessive enthusiasm.”

The article then says that the Shanghai free-trade zone should not “be reduced to the prey of political struggle.”

Given that, by the Communist Party’s own account, China has been strengthening “social development” for 60 years, the article is not much of an endorsement for a speedy change. It is also notable that China is in the midst of one of the biggest Internet crackdowns to date. In recent months, dozens have been arrested for spreading online rumors and some of China’s most influential online personalities have been forced to give confessions about their “irresponsible” Internet behavior on national television.

Despite this, the opening of the Internet in special zones would not in fact be completely at odds with the current censorship regime in China. While the government blocks foreign social-media sites like Facebook and forces domestic social media sites to closely monitor online discourse, it has also taken efforts to project a more open image to foreign business travelers.

High-end hotels are allowed to run virtual private networks that allow for full Internet access. Phones brought in from other countries that roam in China are also generally not affected by the Great Firewall, though analysts say it would be easy for the government to censor the Internet for those handsets.

An open Internet in certain free-trade zones also would not be much of a threat to the government, which as the Friday People’s Daily piece reminds, continues to worry about social-media organized revolutions like those that have taken place in recent years in the Middle East.

Even the Great Wall had gates for travelers to pass through, and a few million businessmen getting unfettered access to the Internet in certain geographies is unlikely to spur the type of social organization against the party that it worries about. Even so, the hubbub created by this week’s news reports shows how difficult it would be to carry out any experiments with a more open Internet in parts of China. That means the People’s Daily’s prognostications are likely to be more reliable than the optimism of officials surrounding China’s free-trade zones.